Theorems for free from separation logic specifications

Abstract

Separation logic specifications with abstract predicates intuitively enforce a discipline that constrains when and how calls may be made between a client and a library. Thus a separation logic specification of a library intuitively enforces a protocol on the trace of interactions between a client and the library. We show how to formalize this intuition and demonstrate how to derive "free theorems" about such interaction traces from abstract separation logic specifications. We present several examples of free theorems. In particular, we prove that a so-called logically atomic concurrent separation logic specification of a concurrent module operation implies that the operation is linearizable. All the results presented in this paper have been mechanized and formally proved in the Coq proof assistant using the Iris higher-order concurrent separation logic framework.